Many solar panels are discarded before the end of their technical lifespan, wasting valuable energy generation potential. Reusing these panels in underserved communities expands clean energy access but incurs upfront processing costs and yields energy later, at diminishing capacity. To justify such value retention efforts, the temporal dimension is essential yet underexplored. This study uses Time-Explicit Life Cycle Assessment and Costing to investigate when, which values were retained, and at which cost, across three solar panel reuse cases in the Netherlands. Results show life cycle Carbon Footprints savings of up to 231,700kgCO2-eq and financial savings up to 307,935. However, during reuse processing years, Carbon Footprints rise by 37 %, and upfront costs rise by up to 90 %. Cost bearers and beneficiaries differ. Nevertheless, these additional impacts balance out in 2-3 years. Reuse emerges as a promising circular strategy, provided financing and policy mechanisms will be in place to address upfront costs.

In the Netherlands, the residential sector accounted for 16.8% of total final energy consumption in 2022, mostly from natural gas. Current policies and standards aimed at reducing residential energy consumption mainly focus on improving the performance of buildings and appliances. Previous studies on urban heat island effects have consistently shown that urban areas tend to be warmer than their surroundings, while some have further highlighted that spatial arrangements of land use types can moderate local microclimatic conditions, which may in turn influence local energy consumption. However, assessments of the impacts of urban morphology on residential energy consumption remain limited, especially for space heating demands in winter. In this study, we develop a systematic framework to define and classify urban morphology indicators at the neighborhood scale. We apply this framework to neighborhoods in the Netherlands and employ a Spatial Durbin Model to estimate the impacts of urban morphology on per-capita residential energy consumption (REPC), considering landscape metrics, building characteristics, and demographic indicators under the broader definition of urban morphology. The results reveal that more compact built environments and interspersed water bodies are associated with lower REPC, whereas tree- and grass-covered green infrastructure show mutually opposite relationships. Overall, beyond the substantial influence of building characteristics and demographic features, the composition and configuration of land use are also significantly related to REPC. These findings demonstrate the role of neighborhood-scale urban morphology in shaping residential energy consumption and provide implications from the perspective of landscape planning in heating-dominated climates.

Construction and demolition waste is the largest waste stream in the European Union (EU). Although reported recovery rates are high, they are dominated by low-value practices (such as backfilling), which limit the uptake of secondary raw materials (2RMs) in closed-loop applications and undermine genuine circularity. Achieving circular construction requires shifting from recovery rates to value retention through reuse and recycling to ensure that 2RMs effectively substitute virgin inputs. Drawing on insights from six EU-funded projects—C2CA, HISER, VEEP, ICEBERG, FutuRaM, and RAW—this study analyzes key barriers and opportunities for enhancing 2RM uptake. It proposes a coherent framework of policy recommendations structured across regulatory, technological, economic, informational, and institutional dimensions. Collectively, these recommendations outline a roadmap for policymakers and practitioners to move beyond recovery metrics toward systemic value retention of materials in the construction sector.

Purpose The transition to a circular and biobased built environment offers major potential to reduce embodied greenhouse gas emissions, yet the extent to which environmental assessment research addresses practitioner needs remains unclear. This study examines the alignment and divergence between academic work and industry priorities in circular biobased construction. Design/methodology/approach We combined two approaches: (1) four workshops with architecture, engineering, and construction stakeholders to identify key questions and concerns, and (2) a scoping review of 189 academic papers, categorized with a multi-dimensional taxonomy and clustered using k-medoids. Findings The workshops highlighted six overarching themes: material availability, land use, supply chains, design, environmental impacts, and political and cultural shifts. The literature clustered mainly around four scales: (1) materials and products, (2) buildings, (3) building stock, and (4) regional planning. While strong alignment emerged around material availability and environmental impacts, major gaps remain in supply chains, design, land use, and societal dimensions. Addressing these gaps can guide more actionable assessments for policy and industry. These findings inform a research agenda that advances theoretical understanding of how environmental assessment research engages with circular biobased construction, while also identifying priority areas where further work is needed to support decision-making in practice. Originality/value This study systematically compares environmental assessment research on circular biobased construction with practitioner concerns. By translating research–practice misalignments into a structured research agenda, it provides an evidence-based foundation for more actionable assessments that better support policy and industry decision-making.

China's urbanization has entered a post-overbuilding era, where the scale of construction activities and the demand for related materials are expected to decline. While this transition may contribute to emission reductions, it creates uncertainty for building material industries, such as cement. Based on metabolism theory, this study systematically assesses the cement industry prospects in China from 2025 to 2100. The results indicate that overbuilding has driven excessive expansion of clinker capacity by 104.86 Mt and has caused persistent disruptions to metabolic processes, with future clinker demand projected to remain volatile. In the short term (2025-2035), clinker capacity utilization is projected to remain persistently low, averaging only 48%, owing to weak construction demand. In the medium term (2036-2060), the cement industry enters the golden period for the structural adjustments to retire outdated capacity. Even if capacity-reduction targets are achieved by 2060, long-term (2061-2100) clinker demand is projected to fluctuate and remain at a low level. Moreover, four provincial types with distinct challenge patterns were identified, underscoring the need for tailored regulatory strategies. This study offers a crucial perspective on the systemic imbalances induced by overbuilding, thereby providing a scientific foundation for optimizing China's future industry in planning strategic transitions, phasing out outdated technologies and investing in more sustainable options.

Premise has been quickly adopted as a major tool for performing prospective LCAs (pLCA). Premise databases are generated by combining the ecoinvent database and data from climate change (CC) scenarios implemented in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). Both the extent of changes made with Premise and the focus on CC raise a question on how they affect LCA results. We aim to give practitioners better insight into how changes may affect results when using Premise databases. Our analysis of Premise consists of several steps. We begin by generating three Premise databases, one for 2020, and two for 2050 assuming different future changes: one that represents a continuation of current trajectories and policies (Base) and one that represents assuming ambitious decarbonization strategies (RCP 2.6). We analyze these databases based on 9 industrial products: Electricity, Heat, Road Transport, Steel, Aluminium, Copper, Concrete, Organic Chemical and Inorganic Chemical. We calculate results for each of them for 16 impact categories, although we focus on CC as the main driver of changes in these databases. We then assess impact change the different databases for each product. We do a contribution analysis where we analyze the contribution of 15 large groups of processes to these products. For CC, we find that impact changes for most products are related to impact reductions in electricity production and increased use of biomass and Carbon Capture and Storage. We find that Electricity, Heat, Road Transport, Steel and Concrete are primary contributors to their own respective impacts. Other products are instead mainly affected by these groups. Furthermore, the contribution from the Ore Minerals, Energy resources, Chemicals and Transport product groups is much higher when we include Indirect contributions (contributions ‘connected through’ another group, e.g. production of fuel for Transport), these product groups connect to impacts elsewhere in the system. In other impact categories we find much more varied results, though the uncertainty around these results is high, specifically ‘land use’ shows large changes in impact. Our approach can highlight products or product groups of interest in large databases like Premise, which can aid in modeling and finding errors. We suggest Premise to be used primarily for assessments of climate change impacts and practitioners clearly communicate versions and settings to make their work reproduceable. Despite us taking a critical stance toward some aspects of Premise, we still recommend using it for pLCA.

Marine fisheries act as both carbon sources and carbon sinks, making them an important component in climate change mitigation strategies. This study aims to quantify the temporal trends and identify the main drivers of net CO2 emissions in China’s marine fisheries, providing scientific support for carbon neutrality policies in the sector. An integrated accounting framework, considering the direct/indirect carbon emissions of energy use and carbon sequestration in aquaculture, was developed to assess net CO2 emissions in China’s coastal provinces from 2003 to 2023. Using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method, the net CO2 emissions were decomposed into eight driving factors, including technological, structural, and economic scale effects, and conducted provincial-level comparisons to capture spatial heterogeneity. In 2016, the CO2 emissions peaked and declined due to the improvements of energy efficiency and the carbon-sequestering of aquaculture. The economic scale was identified as the largest driver of emissions growth, whereas the structural optimization and technological progress mitigated this trend. Spatial analysis revealed that provinces dominated by capture fisheries had higher net carbon emission intensities; in contrast, provinces with more advanced aquaculture sectors exhibited greater carbon sequestration capacities, which can partially offset the carbon emissions generated by capture fisheries. This framework provides a systematic approach for net carbon accounting in marine fisheries and supports the formulation of targeted low-carbon strategies at the regional level.

Construction & demolition is one of the 5 target fields prioritized by the EU action plan for the circular economy, posing unique potentials due to the massive amount of materials mobilised by this sector and facing particular challenges on reducing its environmental footprint. This paper presents a Life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of three novel mixture formulas for recycling construction and demolition waste (CDW) into geopolymer concretes and compares them with the impacts of Portland cement concrete. Additionally, it includes sensitivity analysis through various allocation methods for supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) such as slag and silica fume, which are partially substituted in geopolymer recipes. The findings indicated that recycling scenarios demonstrated a reduction in emissions to the atmosphere for global warming potential (GWP) between 9% and 35% compared to the baseline scenario, highlighting their advantage in mitigating carbon emissions from Portland cement. However, recycling scenarios exhibited higher environmental impacts in categories other than GWP, primarily due to high dosages of alkali activators. Sensitivity analysis on allocation methods showed that if no burdens were allocated to SCMs, lower environmental impacts in GWP and eutrophication (EP) were obtained for the recycling scenarios, while mass-based allocation led to worse performance of recycling across all categories. Contribution analysis show the hotspots of environmental sustainability in recycling CDW for geopolymer concretes were SCMs and alkali activators, suggesting that future development of the mixture formula should aim at avoiding or minimizing SCM and alkali usage, while enhancing CDW reactivity.

Well-maintained urban greenspaces (UGSs) can provide benefits for human health and recreation. Existing evaluations often focus solely on greenspace presence, overlooking their attractiveness and the resulting quality as perceived by the citizens. Thereby, we lack comprehensive understanding on whether citizens have equal access to high-quality UGSs that can truly provide health benefits and enhance life satisfaction, obscuring systemic inequalities in environmental justice. Here we sought to address this challenge by taking cultural ecosystem service (CES) and social values of UGSs as a proxy for the perceived UGS quality. Through a four-month survey of 558 citizens in Xiamen, China, we quantified UGS social values and integrated them into the evaluations of UGS use and the inequalities therein between neighborhoods. Our findings indicate that previous metrics may misrepresent actual enjoyment of UGSs (with coverage-based valuation at 10.28% while social value-weighted assessment is 6.49%), typically because neighborhoods may have greenspaces with disparate social values, causing an unbalanced distribution of attractive UGSs. When combined with major inequalities in access to high-quality UGSs, this may cause significant differences in perceived health benefits among citizens (Gini coefficient increases from 0.69 to 0.79). We additionally observed that the three focal drivers of these inequalities—greenspace coverage, local population mobility and UGS social values—vary across neighborhoods, informing targeted policy interventions. We highlight that disparities in UGS social values contribute to major extents to inequalities in health benefits, emphasizing the need to extend greenspace assessments from quantity to quality and ensuring equal access to high-quality greenspaces and their well-being benefits.

Rapid urbanization alters habitat quality and connectivity, influencing species dispersal and ultimately shaping community assembly. Increasingly, urban environments and their vegetation are shown to be important for the conservation of biodiversity. However, urban species distributions remain poorly understood. By integrating DNA-based sampling with species distribution models (SDMs), we aim to quantitatively assess urban community assembly while using a novel green infrastructure classification framework intended to assess both urban biodiversity and ecosystem services.We sampled invertebrate distributions in The Hague, the Netherlands, using two complementary DNA-based methods: traditional bulk trapping (n = 205) and environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling (n = 207). Species were identified using DNA sequencing and Operational Taxonomic Units, with presence-absence data used to develop SDMs driven by vegetation and anthropogenic indicators.The SDMs generally outperformed random models (59.5 %) and performed strong during calibration (90.4 %, AUC > 0.70). They highlighted that vegetation density, structure, and proximity to water are the primary drivers of invertebrate distributions, while direct anthropogenic pressures play a minimal role. At the same time, very few models (1.3 %) performed well during validation.This finding indicates challenges in predicting species distributions and suggest that dispersal is not a limiting factor in The Hague’s urban environment, as current green infrastructures appear sufficient to support many species. The model overfitting and low validation performance also indicate the need to refine biodiversity indicators for urban environments, as typically used vegetation indicators do not predict species distributions well. The absence of dispersal limitations that suggest that the urban environment acts as one large meta-community, indicates that ensuring sufficient green infrastructure in the urban environment should be the first priority to enhance biodiversity in the urban environment.

Building energy renovation mitigates carbon emissions but often increases material demand and financial costs. This work addresses this problem by investigating the carbon, material, and economic footprints of various renovation scenarios in the Dutch residential sector from 2015 to 2050. Results show that, compared to the baseline, façade refurbishment could lower cumulative lifecycle emissions by up to 0.3%, while raising material use by 21-25% and costs by 2-6%. Sensitivity analysis indicates that refurbishing the heating system offers greater potential for reducing carbon emissions. Rebuilding could cut emissions by up to 17% under an ambitious energy transition, though this would triple material use and construction costs. Circularity strategies could offset up to 89% of the material footprint and reduce carbon emissions by up to 23%. Nonetheless, considerable cost increases from renovations remain inevitable, even with advanced material circulation systems, suggesting circular renovation strategies with enhanced incentives as concerted action.

Cross-regional railway infrastructure (CRI) plays an important role in promoting coordinated regional development. But current understanding on how to strengthen cross-regional railway infrastructure interconnection (CRII) and its influence mechanism is still very limited. This study constructed a conceptual model of CRII system to reveal the logic of CRII operation, and systematically identified 16 influencing factors. Meanwhile, an F-MCDM (F-Multi-criteria Decision Making) model was created to capture the interactions among the influencing factors, identifying eight key influencing factors and four possible countermeasures. The results revealed that policy and institutional innovation, incentives and investment ecology, efficient implementation and coordination mechanisms, and supply chain and technology security capacity are four crucial challenges for CRII. Among them, the cooperation modes between the central government and local governments, as well as among local governments, were identified as the most critical factors. Accordingly, a four-pronged framework of “policy alignment, cooperative incentives, operational excellence, and supply assurance” was developed to better promote CRII. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of CRII, enriches the body of knowledge on cross-regional transportation infrastructure interconnection, and provides theoretical support and decision-making references for policymakers to implement CRII.

Urban forests and grasslands provide diverse services from their unique characteristics. Optimizing green spaces by understanding urban residents' preferences is a critical challenge for sustainable city development amid limited land resources. However, the mechanism influencing exposure across various types of green remains unclear. This study utilized multi-temporal mobile signal data from Shanghai to quantify the exposure intensity (EI) and density (ED) for forests and grasslands. These metrics addressed the gap by revealing spatiotemporal variations in exposure preference (EP) and related socioeconomic influences. Specifically, the study addressed two key questions: (1) Do urban residents exhibit preferences between forests and grasslands in terms of EI and ED? (2) How do socioeconomic features influence these preferences? Results showed: (1) Forests had almost double the annual EI (542.86 p/h) and ED (2.69 p/m(2)/h) of grasslands (P < 0.001). However, grasslands in central regions exhibited significantly higher ED (13.60 vs. 11.83 p/m(2)/h; P < 0.001). (2) Commercial House (34.4 % importance) and Sports & Recreation (15.7 %) maximized green exposure, while Road Furniture reduced it. (3) Evening exposure peaks in central regions extended by 1 hour due to commercial-cultural synergies. Forest ED, highly driven by Commercial House, clustered in central cores and specific non-central communities, whereas Road Furniture most negatively impacted central periphery communities. These findings directly inform differentiated urban planning strategies: forests should prioritize improving accessibility to sustain prolonged exposures, while grasslands need spatial optimization to accommodate peak social demand. By aligning green space planning with socioeconomic drivers, cities can enhance the effectiveness of their service under land constraints.

This study aims to address the environmental challenges posed by construction and demolition waste (CDW) through its upcycling into a green concrete solution that supports the principles of the circular economy. To this end, a new generation Eco-hybrid cement was developed for the binder phase, using a ternary combination of CDW, calcium sulfoaluminate (CSA) cement, and Portland cement (PC). For the aggregate phase, 100% CDWbased recycled concrete aggregate was utilized. The green concrete was analyzed for its mechanical and environmental performance using comprehensive testing parameters, including compressive strength, drying shrinkage, water absorption, freeze-thaw resistance, chloride permeability, and life cycle assessment. The green concrete achieved a compressive strength of 43.8 MPa at 28 days, with acceptable early-age strength owing to CSA cement and increased strength over time due to the pozzolanic activity of CDW. Its durability was comparable to PC concrete, making it suitable for structural applications. Microstructural analyses validated that CDW components contributed to mechanical performance by forming C-S-H gel at later ages. Environmentally, Eco-hybrid cement resulted in a global warming potential of 575.34 kg CO2-eq per ton, compared to 845 kg CO2eq for PC. Green concrete exhibited reductions in various environmental impact categories, ranging from 29% to 42% compared to PC concrete. Unlike conventional approaches that primarily use CDW in aggregate production, this study demonstrates the feasibility of reducing the PC phase in concrete through a well-designed ternary system, ultimately using approximately 87.8% waste material by mass in the final concrete mixture.

Rooftop photovoltaics (RPVs) are essential for advancing energy transition and achieving climate goals. However, there is limited understanding of their future potential at a granular geographical level and their potential to meet future electricity demand from buildings under different heat transition scenarios. This study presents a comprehensive assessment of the RPV potential at the individual building level in the Netherlands, considering detailed building stock dynamics, renovation strategies, and heat transition scenarios. The results show that RPVs currently generate 3.86 TWh of electricity, with the potential to increase to 19.52 TWh. The total electricity demand of the residential building sector is about 27.26 TWh in 2020, which can increase significantly to 34.19-45.11 TWh by 2050, depending on heat pump penetration and renovation standards. RPVs alone can potentially meet about 43-57% of this electricity demand and save up to 11.32 Mt CO2-eq in 2050 (26% of current operational carbon emissions) if public grid electricity could be replaced by RPV electricity. However, the actual contribution of RPVs to the reduction/decarbonization of household electricity is subject to large uncertainties due to both the momentary and seasonal mismatch between RPV supply and electricity demand. Future research could increase the temporal resolution of our model to better explore the real potential of RPVs for targeted electrification and decarbonization in the building sector.

Contribution analysis (CA) is an essential method to understand and communicate life cycle assessment (LCA) results. Different approaches to CA have been used to answer different questions. However, it is often unclear which approach is used in LCA studies, leaving confusion as to how contributions are actually assessed. This makes a correct interpretation or replication difficult and can even lead to ill-founded conclusions. This study aims at a clear terminology for transparent CA communication. First, we introduce eight approaches to CA used in the literature. Then, we introduce an example case study to compare each CA approach against. We then discuss the eight approaches, discussing from what and to what they contribute. We also make a distinction between the direct and indirect perspectives, where direct contributions are from elementary flows (EF) of processes, while indirect contributions are from all EF of processes contributing to the intermediate flows (products). We identify and describe several approaches for direct CA: (a) Individual elementary flow CA, for specific individual EFs from single processes (individual EF CA). (b) EF CA, for one EF across all processes, e.g. all CO2 flows. (c) Process CA, for all EFs per process, e.g. contribution to climate change impact from the process ‘electricity production from coal’. (d) Grouping can also be applied to these approaches, e.g. process group CA for all ‘electricity production’ processes. Direct and indirect contributions can also be quantified. First-tier CA, measuring the direct contribution of the functional unit (FU) process and indirect contribution of each intermediate flow of the FU. Life cycle stage CA, e.g. calculating the contributions of life cycle stages like ‘production’, ‘use’, and ‘end of life’. And finally, path CA—often visualized in Sankey diagrams—e.g. showing the ‘path’ contributions take to the FU. We compare the results, advantages, and disadvantages of each approach, discuss general limitations of CA, and give recommendations on reporting CA. Our study can help guide practitioners in choosing relevant CA approaches for their studies to gain better insights and more transparently communicate and report their results. This should contribute to a higher quality and more reproducible body of LCA literature and more well-founded conclusions.

Rapid urbanisation puts pressure on biodiversity by habitat fragmentation and habitat quality among others. These habitat changes are known to affect species dispersal and connectivity and ultimately species distribution in many ecosystems. However, little is known about the changing urban species distributions which in turn influence community assembly. New DNA-based sampling methods combined with species distribution modelling provide a way to quantitatively estimate urban community assembly through assessing many species distributions and their drivers simultaneously. We investigated species distributions of entire communities in the city of The Hague (the Netherlands) by sampling DNA with two distinct methods: collecting data on invertebrate occurrence with traditional trapping (bulk; n = 205) and a novel Environmental DNA method (eDNA; n = 207). After DNA sequencing, species were identified using Operational Taxonomic Units. Subsequently, individual species presence and absence were used in Species Distribution Models (SDMs), based on spatial information on vegetation and anthropogenic influences. The results show a difference in coverage of sampling methods (bulk vs. eDNA), indicating their complementary information. The models on species distributions were generally significantly better than random models (59.5%), and performed well during calibration (90.4%, AUC > 0.70). In contrast, during validation very few SDMs (1.3%, AUC > 0.70) performed adequately in predicting species distributions. Through this novel combination of DNA sampling with SDMs we show that density and structure of vegetation, as well as distance to water are more important for urban invertebrate distribution than direct anthropogenic pressures. This suggests that dispersal is not a limiting factor in The Hague urban environment. The availability of a variety of urban green infrastructures seems sufficient to attract many of the species observed. Hence, ensuring sufficient green infrastructure in the urban environment should be the first priority to enhance biodiversity in the urban environment. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Lack of knowledge and tools hampers circular transition in the construction industry. This study analyzes the potential of a framework of circular indicators put forward by the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM-C) as an answer to the prevailing need of a metric for building circularity assessment to promote circular construction. A qualitative analysis approach is adopted, involving literature review, comparative case study and semi-structured interviews conducted for collecting expert opinions. An in-depth scrutiny of the BREEAM-C indicators revealed that they are rooted in circular principles, cover building circularity realizable through circular strategies, and have given due consideration to circularity in different impact areas, structural layers and life-cycle stages of buildings. Moreover, BREEAM-C indicators not only show capacity in identifying CE-related practices implemented, but also serve as benchmarks testifying that CE principles/strategies are incorporated in the design, construction, operation and management of the buildings. Despite having room for expansion, BREEAM-C has proven to be applicable and practical with potential for use in Taiwan as confirmed by expert opinions. Nevertheless, adaptation/localization is required to cater for different concerns with respect to climate and safety as well as local context and legislations.

This study presents the first application of the pressure-state-response (PSR) model in the comprehensive assessment of construction and demolition waste (CDW) recycling benefits. Unlike traditional methods, the PSR model provides a multi-dimensional analysis that integrates economic, environmental, and social factors, offering a more holistic approach to evaluating the impact of CDW recycling strategies. This model enables stakeholders to better understand the pressures, states, and responses involved in CDW management, providing actionable insights to optimize recycling efforts and support sustainable urban development. Using the pressure-state-response (PSR) logical framework of sustainable economics, this paper systematically analyzed the comprehensive benefit mechanism of the recycling of construction and demolition waste (CDW), and designed a comprehensive benefit evaluation model for CDW recycling. At the same time, taking Chongqing as an example, the management status of construction and demolition waste, the supply and demand matching of sustainable recycling products, and the impact of the input and output of CDW management were analyzed. The results were as follows: (1) The recovery rate of urban manure fluctuated between 0.13 and 0.17, mainly in temporary landfill. (2) Based on the latest market demand data of CDW recycled products, the supply–demand ratio of recycled products fluctuated between 0.11 and 0.21. This change in the supply–demand ratio reflects improvements in recycling technologies, such as the introduction of C2CA technology, which has greatly increased the supply of high-quality recycled materials. In addition, government policies encouraging the use of recycled products in public projects have contributed to this shift, further aligning supply with market demand. (3) The benefit–cost ratio of CDW management reflects new recycling technologies and the improved efficiency of CDW management. The benefit–cost ratio, which currently fluctuates between 0.32 and 0.39, more accurately reflects the current state of CDW management, which is increasingly adopting advanced technologies, resulting in increased efficiency and reduced costs. Based on this, this paper discusses the supply–demand relationship and benefit–cost ratio in CDW management from supply-side and demand-side perspectives, and puts forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions. The research results provide a clear reference for improving the efficiency of building demolition waste resource utilization, especially in optimizing the balance of market supply and demand, and improving the economic benefits of recycled products. By analyzing the balance between the supply and demand ratio and the benefit–cost ratio, this study helps inform policy makers, businesses, and investors, to promote the sustainable development of CDW recycling projects to maximize resource efficiency, while reducing environmental pressures. These results not only provide practical guidelines for the implementation of CDW recycling projects, but also lay a foundation for future policy formulation and the setting of industry standards.